New Year's Concert

What are you going to listen to?

A festive start to the new year that runs from Italian opera by Verdi and Puccini to German opera by Strauss to end at Viennese operetta by that other Strauss.

Aida and Violetta

Especially for the festive opening of the Suez Canal, Verdi had been commissioned by the kedive (governor) of Egypt to write Aida . Admittedly, due to circumstances, the premiere did not take place on that occasion, but it did take place shortly thereafter with at the Cairo Opera Theatre. Verdi had taken great pains to give the opera, set in ancient Egypt, a real historical touch. For example, he had special trumpets made for the triumphal march, based on images found in Egyptian tombs and temples. And the various melodies that appear in the ballet suggest a truly oriental atmosphere. Equally impressive is Aida's solo from the first act. As a captured Ethiopian princess, she sings of her conflicting feelings of, on the one hand, pride for her homeland and, on the other, love for the Egyptian general Radames.

Almost twenty years before Aida , Verdi had achieved enormous success with La traviata, still an absolute evergreen on the opera stage. Of particular note is the Prelude to this opera, in which the strings use a subtly hushed melody to prepare the listener for the tragic story of the infatuated, sick and dying courtesan Violetta.

Final Exam

How talented Giacomo Puccini was was evident during his studies at the Milan Conservatory. There he regularly had to submit a composition as an examination as proof of his progress. The Preludio Sinfonico was his final examination piece, unanimously considered a minor masterpiece by the examination committee. Puccini grew to become the most important opera composer Italy has known after Verdi. One of his greatest successes was Tosca from 1900. Definitely not an opera for wimps. It is full of hate, deceit, torture and murder. The highlight is the title heroine's desperate aria Vissi d'arte , in which she wonders why fate has been so cruel to her.

Richard

The rest of the program is filled with music by two Strausses, incidentally not related. Richard Strauss already had a successful career of symphonic poems to his name before he threw himself wholeheartedly into opera. In it, he had a penchant for pithy stories with a good dose of ironic humor. Despite their excellent marriage, Strauss and his beloved but hot-tempered Pauline occasionally had serious clashes. One of these quarrels he found so comical in retrospect that he decided to turn it into an opera. Intermezzo, had enormous success, although Pauline thought it was hers.

Equally bizarre is the story of the opera Ariadne auf Naxos, actually an opera within an opera. A rich man is organizing a big party, but because the schedule is getting a little out of hand, he decides to have the planned performances of an opera about the myth of Ariadne and a comic skit from a commedia del arte troupe performed at the same time. It leads to droll entanglements, such as the one in Ein schönes war in which Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus on the rocks of Naxos sings of her tragic situation, but is interrupted each time by the ironic commentary of the commedia actors.

Johann

Half a century before that, it was Johann Strauss Jr. who celebrated unimaginable triumphs in Vienna. With more than five hundred marches, quadrilles, polkas and especially waltzes, he was more famous than all the great composers combined. Unter Donner und Blitz is a nice hearty polka, but the Perpetuum mobile is a real gem. It is a series of variations on a small motif, in which each orchestra member can show his virtuosity. Not only did he celebrate triumphs on the dance floor and Concert Hall , he also had success after success in the theater with his colorful operettas. His absolute masterpiece in this genre is Die Fledermaus, if only for its flamboyant overture. In the second act of the comedy, the hero of the story encounters all sorts of disguised partygoers at a masked ball, many of whom he does not recognize. For example, he flirts with a Hungarian countess, who sings a fiery csardas, but whom he does not recognize as his own wife....

Kees Wisse